Thirty Minutes Before the Dawn—Trinity Alan B
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Mindfulness in the Life of a Muslim
2 | Mindfulness in the Life of a Muslim Author Biography Justin Parrott has BAs in Physics, English from Otterbein University, MLIS from Kent State University, MRes in Islamic Studies in progress from University of Wales, and is currently Research Librarian for Middle East Studies at NYU in Abu Dhabi. Disclaimer: The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in these papers and articles are strictly those of the authors. Furthermore, Yaqeen does not endorse any of the personal views of the authors on any platform. Our team is diverse on all fronts, allowing for constant, enriching dialogue that helps us produce high-quality research. Copyright © 2017. Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research 3 | Mindfulness in the Life of a Muslim Introduction In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful Modern life involves a daily bustle of noise, distraction, and information overload. Our senses are constantly stimulated from every direction to the point that a simple moment of quiet stillness seems impossible for some of us. This continuous agitation hinders us from getting the most out of each moment, subtracting from the quality of our prayers and our ability to remember Allah. We all know that we need more presence in prayer, more control over our wandering minds and desires. But what exactly can we do achieve this? How can we become more mindful in all aspects of our lives, spiritual and temporal? That is where the practice of exercising mindfulness, in the Islamic context of muraqabah, can help train our minds to become more disciplined and can thereby enhance our regular worship and daily activities. -
The Making of an Atomic Bomb
(Image: Courtesy of United States Government, public domain.) INTRODUCTORY ESSAY "DESTROYER OF WORLDS": THE MAKING OF AN ATOMIC BOMB At 5:29 a.m. (MST), the world’s first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexican desert, releasing a level of destructive power unknown in the existence of humanity. Emitting as much energy as 21,000 tons of TNT and creating a fireball that measured roughly 2,000 feet in diameter, the first successful test of an atomic bomb, known as the Trinity Test, forever changed the history of the world. The road to Trinity may have begun before the start of World War II, but the war brought the creation of atomic weaponry to fruition. The harnessing of atomic energy may have come as a result of World War II, but it also helped bring the conflict to an end. How did humanity come to construct and wield such a devastating weapon? 1 | THE MANHATTAN PROJECT Models of Fat Man and Little Boy on display at the Bradbury Science Museum. (Image: Courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.) WE WAITED UNTIL THE BLAST HAD PASSED, WALKED OUT OF THE SHELTER AND THEN IT WAS ENTIRELY SOLEMN. WE KNEW THE WORLD WOULD NOT BE THE SAME. A FEW PEOPLE LAUGHED, A FEW PEOPLE CRIED. MOST PEOPLE WERE SILENT. J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER EARLY NUCLEAR RESEARCH GERMAN DISCOVERY OF FISSION Achieving the monumental goal of splitting the nucleus The 1930s saw further development in the field. Hungarian- of an atom, known as nuclear fission, came through the German physicist Leo Szilard conceived the possibility of self- development of scientific discoveries that stretched over several sustaining nuclear fission reactions, or a nuclear chain reaction, centuries. -
46 ROSENBERG GRAND JURY WITNESSES (Testimony to Be
46 ROSENBERG GRAND JURY WITNESSES (testimony to be released September 11, 2008) Government is not releasing testimony of William Danziger, Max Elichter, and David Greenglass The descriptions provided below are based on available evidence. Additional details will be added after the transcripts are reviewed. 1. Ruth Alscher Ruth Alscher was Max Elitcher’s sister‐in‐law. She was married to his brother, Morris Alscher. In interviews with the FBI, Max and Helene Elitcher said that Ruth Alscher attended a party in 1944 in New York with them that was attended by three individuals who the Bureau suspected were Soviet agents: Julius Rosenberg, Joel Barr and William Perl. She also attended parties at a Greenwich Village apartment that Barr and another Soviet agent, Alfred Sarant, shared. Ruth Alscher was a friend of Bernice Levin; Levin was identified as a Soviet agent by Elizabeth Bentley. Assistant U.S. Attorney John W. Foley confidentially told the FBI in 1951 that Ruth Alscher had asserted privileges under the Fifth Amendment when called to testify to the Rosenberg grand jury. At the time of the Rosenberg/Sobell trial, Morris Alscher had died, leaving Ruth Alscher with three small children. 2. Herman Bauch [no reference] 3. Soloman H. Bauch Lawyer for Pitt Machine Products; where Julius Rosenberg worked. On June 6, 1950, Julius authorized Bauch to empower Bernie Greenglass to sign company checks, telling him that the Rosenbergs were contemplating a trip. 4. Harry Belock One of Morton Sobell’s superior at Reeves Electronics in June 1950 when Sobell fled to Mexico. 5. Dr. George Bernhardt Bernhardt testified at the Rosenbergs trial regarding plans of the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell to secure travel documents and flee the country, possibly to Russia. -
Secrets Jeremy Bernstein
INFERENCE / Vol. 6, No. 1 Secrets Jeremy Bernstein Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the decided to found a rival weapons laboratory. Even if Teller United States had offered me a job, I doubt that I would have accepted.3 by Alex Wellerstein After obtaining my degree, I was offered a job that University of Chicago Press, 528 pp., $35.00. would keep me in Cambridge for at least another year. One year became two and at the end of my second year I was uclear weapons have been shrouded in secrecy accepted at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. from the very beginning. After plutonium was It was around this time that the chairman of the physics discovered at the University of California in department at Harvard, Kenneth Bainbridge, came to me NDecember 1940, researchers led by Glenn Seaborg submit- with an offer. Bainbridge had been an important figure at ted a pair of letters to the Physical Review. The details of Los Alamos during the war. Robert Oppenheimer had put their discovery were withheld from publication until after him in charge of the site in New Mexico where the Trinity the war.1 Once the project to make a nuclear weapon got test had taken place.4 Bainbridge told me that the labora- underway, secrecy became a very serious matter indeed. tory was offering summer jobs to young PhDs and asked The story of these efforts and how they evolved after the if I was interested. I was very interested. Los Alamos had war is the subject of Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data: an almost mystical significance for me due to its history The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States. -
The Younger Oppenheimer
Vol 461|24 September 2009 BOOKS & ARTS The younger Oppenheimer Frank Oppenheimer founded the San Francisco Exploratorium: his charisma and passion for science education made him as influential, if not as famous, as his brother, explains Robert Crease. Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up by K. C. Cole Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2009. 416 pp. $27 Alfred Russel Wallace wrote that Charles Darwin never lost “the restless curiosity of the child”. One could say the same of the experimental physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985), younger brother of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose life has been far more documented. Like Robert, Frank was involved in leftist politics in ways that damaged his career; unlike Robert, Frank’s relentless enthusiasm allowed him to forge a dramatic comeback. His masterpiece was the San Francisco Exploratorium in Cali- fornia, through which he influenced the lives of countless people. K. C. Cole, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is one of those people. In the early 1970s, the magazine Saturday Review assigned the fledgling writer — who says she had “no interest in science whatsoever” and thought an accelerator was a gas pedal — to cover Frank Oppenheimer brought a “rancher’s aesthetic” to the Exploratorium science museum. the Exploratorium. She was transformed by meeting Frank, who struck her as “a kind of years, relying on familiar sources of some- a neighbour telling her of how Frank once Yoda” and helped to launch her career as a times doubtful reliability. She does not explore became incensed by a cow’s refusal to enter a science writer. -
German Jews in the United States: a Guide to Archival Collections
GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE,WASHINGTON,DC REFERENCE GUIDE 24 GERMAN JEWS IN THE UNITED STATES: AGUIDE TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS Contents INTRODUCTION &ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 ABOUT THE EDITOR 6 ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS (arranged alphabetically by state and then city) ALABAMA Montgomery 1. Alabama Department of Archives and History ................................ 7 ARIZONA Phoenix 2. Arizona Jewish Historical Society ........................................................ 8 ARKANSAS Little Rock 3. Arkansas History Commission and State Archives .......................... 9 CALIFORNIA Berkeley 4. University of California, Berkeley: Bancroft Library, Archives .................................................................................................. 10 5. Judah L. Mages Museum: Western Jewish History Center ........... 14 Beverly Hills 6. Acad. of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Margaret Herrick Library, Special Coll. ............................................................................ 16 Davis 7. University of California at Davis: Shields Library, Special Collections and Archives ..................................................................... 16 Long Beach 8. California State Library, Long Beach: Special Collections ............. 17 Los Angeles 9. John F. Kennedy Memorial Library: Special Collections ...............18 10. UCLA Film and Television Archive .................................................. 18 11. USC: Doheny Memorial Library, Lion Feuchtwanger Archive ................................................................................................... -
The Development of Military Nuclear Strategy And
The Development of Military Nuclear Strategy and Anglo-American Relations, 1939 – 1958 Submitted by: Geoffrey Charles Mallett Skinner to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, July 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. (Signature) ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 Abstract There was no special governmental partnership between Britain and America during the Second World War in atomic affairs. A recalibration is required that updates and amends the existing historiography in this respect. The wartime atomic relations of those countries were cooperative at the level of science and resources, but rarely that of the state. As soon as it became apparent that fission weaponry would be the main basis of future military power, America decided to gain exclusive control over the weapon. Britain could not replicate American resources and no assistance was offered to it by its conventional ally. America then created its own, closed, nuclear system and well before the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, the event which is typically seen by historians as the explanation of the fracturing of wartime atomic relations. Immediately after 1945 there was insufficient systemic force to create change in the consistent American policy of atomic monopoly. As fusion bombs introduced a new magnitude of risk, and as the nuclear world expanded and deepened, the systemic pressures grew. -
Signal to Background
signal to background Tevatron sets world record; the most productive age for research; numbers: Pierre Auger Observatory; bicycle networks; keeping computers cool; opera review: Doctor Atomic. 160 Collider Run II Peak Luminosity 140 (x1030 cm-2sec-1) 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 2 3 4 5 Jun 2002 Jun 2003 Jun 2004 Jun 2005 Dec 200 Dec 200 Dec 200 Dec 200 A bright machine to produce than protons, and date of publication of the top The Fermilab Tevatron achieved the Tevatron operates at a 25 theoretical papers from the a world-record peak lumi- much higher collision energy spires all-time top-cited list. nosity, or brightness, in colliding of 1960 GeV. The Tevatron Included are the 29 authors protons and antiprotons on record is tied to the startup of whose ages are in the database. October 4, 2005. The luminosity a new technique to cool anti- Some appear more than once Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab of 141x1030 cm-2sec-1 is about proton beams, which makes as authors on multiple papers. four times the luminosity the beams more concentrated. Half the authors were 32 achieved three years ago, and Kurt Riesselmann or younger when they published more is expected to come. their famous papers. The chart To maximize the potential Don’t cite anybody shows that the most frequent for scientific discovery, accel- over 30? ages are 29 and 30. In fact, erator experts improve and A common assertion is that almost half the ages are con- tune their machines to produce the best work in physics is centrated around the window the largest number of colli- done by people who are under of 29-30. -
Human Nature Must Be Disengaged
THE WELL-SPRINGS OF ACTION: AN ENQUI RV INTO '1-l.M\N NATIJRE' I Richard Broxton Onians' (1951) book, The Opigins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the SouZ, the WopZd, Time and Fate, is as exhaustive as the title suggests. Its value rests in enabling us to perceive the dim outlines of a theory of human powers which was present in the minds of the peoples of western Europe before the dawn of history. The phenomenology and osteol ogy with which Onians supplemented the. account, further enable us to locate the physiological processes on which the theory must have been based. It has been lost. Today we possess only fragments. And yet,we repeatedly make recourse to the theory in our behaviours and speech as if we knew its substance. The hand is placed upon the chest when one pledges allegiance to one's country. To indicate assent, one nods one's head. Some one who is over-sexed is called 'horny'. In a Catholic church, one touches one's forehead and one genuflects before the altar. We associate the symbol of a skull and crossbones with death. We ascribe to ourselves the capacity of appreciating the 'aesthetics' of an object, and speak of the inspiration we receive from a speech. These are but 'shreds and patches', but at one point they were connected. The theory rested on a primordial disjunction between fluid and air; between the liquid or liquefiable substances con tained in the brain, the cerebro-spinal column, the genitals and joints, and the breath. -
Copyright by Paul Harold Rubinson 2008
Copyright by Paul Harold Rubinson 2008 The Dissertation Committee for Paul Harold Rubinson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Containing Science: The U.S. National Security State and Scientists’ Challenge to Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War Committee: —————————————————— Mark A. Lawrence, Supervisor —————————————————— Francis J. Gavin —————————————————— Bruce J. Hunt —————————————————— David M. Oshinsky —————————————————— Michael B. Stoff Containing Science: The U.S. National Security State and Scientists’ Challenge to Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War by Paul Harold Rubinson, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2008 Acknowledgements Thanks first and foremost to Mark Lawrence for his guidance, support, and enthusiasm throughout this project. It would be impossible to overstate how essential his insight and mentoring have been to this dissertation and my career in general. Just as important has been his camaraderie, which made the researching and writing of this dissertation infinitely more rewarding. Thanks as well to Bruce Hunt for his support. Especially helpful was his incisive feedback, which both encouraged me to think through my ideas more thoroughly, and reined me in when my writing overshot my argument. I offer my sincerest gratitude to the Smith Richardson Foundation and Yale University International Security Studies for the Predoctoral Fellowship that allowed me to do the bulk of the writing of this dissertation. Thanks also to the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University, and John Gaddis and the incomparable Ann Carter-Drier at ISS. -
H-Diplo Article Roundtable Review, Vol. X, No. 24
2009 h-diplo H-Diplo Article Roundtable Roundtable Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse Roundtable Web Editor: George Fujii Review Introduction by Thomas Maddux www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables Reviewers: Bruce Craig, Ronald Radosh, Katherine A.S. Volume X, No. 24 (2009) Sibley, G. Edward White 17 July 2009 Response by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr Journal of Cold War Studies 11.3 (Summer 2009) Special Issue: Soviet Espoinage in the United States during the Stalin Era (with articles by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr; Eduard Mark; Gregg Herken; Steven T. Usdin; Max Holland; and John F. Fox, Jr.) http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/jcws/11/3 Stable URL: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-X-24.pdf Contents Introduction by Thomas Maddux, California State University, Northridge.............................. 2 Review by Bruce Craig, University of Prince Edward Island ..................................................... 8 Review by Ronald Radosh, Emeritus, City University of New York ........................................ 16 Review by Katherine A.S. Sibley, St. Josephs University ......................................................... 18 Review by G. Edward White, University of Virginia School of Law ........................................ 23 Author’s Response by John Earl Haynes, Library of Congress, and Harvey Klehr, Emory University ................................................................................................................................ 27 Copyright © 2009 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for non-profit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author(s), web location, date of publication, H-Diplo, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses, contact the H-Diplo editorial staff at [email protected]. H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews, Vol. -
Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists After World War II
DAVID KAISER* Cold War requisitions, scientific manpower, and the production of American physicists after World War II 1. RAYMOND BIRGE’S “MAIN OBJECTIVE” “THE MAIN OBJECTIVE of this department of physics,” Raymond Birge wrote in late May 1955, “is to train Ph.D.’s in physics.” Birge— iconic, somber, a displaced Yankee who traced his New England ancestry nine generations back—had been chair of Berkeley’s physics department for twenty-two years; by the mid-1950s, it was the nation’s largest. At the time he explained his department’s “main objec- tive,” Birge was the retiring president of the American Physical Society (APS). Birge and his colleagues in Berkeley’s physics department had emphasized the importance of its graduate program many times before in annual budget requests to the university administration and in funding reports to private industries; it would be easy to read such remarks as thinly-veiled requests for more funding, since training physics Ph.D.s became expensive after World War II. This time, however, Birge articulated his department’s mission in a letter to a local citizen, far outside of the university bureaucracy, who had no funds to offer and who had requested no such pronouncement. 1 *Program in Science, Technology, and Society, and Department of Physics, Building E51- 185, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139; [email protected]. My thanks to Shane Hamilton for his research assistance, and to Alexis De Greiff, Kenji Ito, John Krige, Elizabeth Paris, and John Rudolph for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. The following abbreviations are used: AIP-EMD, American Institute of Physics, Edu- cation and Manpower Division Records, Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; BAS, Bulletin of the atomic scientists; BDP , University of California, Berkeley, Department of Physics Records, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA; HDP, Harvard University Department of Physics Records, Pusey Library, Cambridge, MA; PDP, Princeton University Department of Physics Records, Seeley G.